164 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



There are men who -will tell you that bees yield fabulous profits, and they are 

 honest. But I have long watched the reports, and while we sometimes hear 

 of tremendous yields of honey in some locality, we frequently get no report 

 from the same section the next year, although the season may be a fair one. 

 Bee-keepers are no way an exception to other people. If they get a big yield 

 they do not put their light under a bushel; but when only a fair yield is 

 obtained it is a hard matter to get even a report. Women are not the sole 

 possessors or owners in fee simple of all the vanity the world possesses. 



Keeping bees is in one respect unlike farming, viz. : a farmer may raise 100 

 acres of wheat on his farm and his neighbor just across the road may raise 100 

 acres too, and so on indefinitely among all the farmers ; and yet each one 

 will raise just as much wheat as though his neighbor did not sow wheat at 

 all. 



In Michigan several bee-keepers have tried to keep bees as a special and 

 exclusive business; but as their families grew larger some other business 

 became a necessity, and now, I think, it may be safely said that there is not a 

 special and exclusive bee-keeper in the State. 



AGRICULTUKE IN OUK FOREIGN COMMERCE. 



BY G. H. lIAPvROWER. 

 [Read at the Otsego and Chelsea Institutes.! 



I propose to speak of the foreign trade in the surplus of our agricultural 

 products. I shall treat the subject both historicaDy and in its present eco- 

 nomic and political aspects. The importance of this branch of our export 

 trade cannot be over-estimated. In the year 1882 our exports of merchan- 

 dise amounted to the sum of $733,000,000, of which cotton, breadstuffs, pro- 

 visions, and live animals made up more than ^536,000,000. While iron and 

 steel, in all forms, amounted to only a little more than two per cent, of the 

 total values sold abroad, and oils to about seven per cent. ; agriculture, in the 

 items mentioned above, furnished seventy-three per cent. It is the products 

 of the farm that pay by far the greatest share of our annual indebtedness for 

 goods imported from abroad. Again, as compared with the home demand, 

 the foreign demand is large and deeply concerns American agriculture; for, 

 while the figures are not so striking in other items, we have recently been 

 sending abroad about one-quarter of our wheat crop and seven-tenths of our 

 cotton crop. A knowledge of the facts of so great a trade is necessary to an 

 understanding of the character and conditions of our foreign commerce. 

 Especially at the present moment is this true, in view of the recent action of 

 European governments in regard to the matter. The rapid increase of Ameri- 

 can competition is viewed with alarm in many quarters, and various means have 

 been resorted to against this rival. Taken also in connection with our own 

 high tariff policy, the export trade has given rise to no little economical dis- 

 cussion among European statesmen and economists. There have been pro- 

 hibition of trade, commissions of inquiry, ''Fair Trade" leagues, and diplo- 

 matic correspondence. 



While I speak congress and the newspapers are discussing the question 

 how to overcome certain difficulties that France and Germany and other 



